


Dark Side of the Moon

by TomorrowIsYesterday (ASingleHeartSings)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, BAMF Haruno Sakura, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Dubious Morality, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Friensdship, Gen, Government Corruption, Haruno Sakura-centric, Hurt/Comfort, Mystery, POV Haruno Sakura, Root|Ne|Foundation, Strong Haruno Sakura, Team as Family, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Underage Prostitution, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2019-10-21 14:47:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17644814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ASingleHeartSings/pseuds/TomorrowIsYesterday
Summary: Sakura has always known things.There isn’t one specific moment where all the memories from some far-off time or alternate life come rushing back. No horrific nightmares or visions. The information is always there, she simply has to reach for it. Just as she knows that the sun will rise tomorrow, she knows that the Uchiha baker from the market, along with all his family, will be dead in less than four years.





	1. Dawn

Sakura has always known things.

There isn’t one specific moment where all the memories from some far-off time or alternate life come rushing back. No nightmares or visions. She can simply ask herself a question and the answer is there waiting for her. Like when searching your mind for a word that's on the tip of your tongue. The information is always there, she just has to reach for it.

Her knowledge could easily be explained away at first as simple forgetfulness because she never searched deeper into her mind for information that she didn’t at least have some everyday access to.

Perhaps her mother told her her maiden name one day and she had only recently recalled it. Somehow knowing at age three that father has more alcohol stashed under his desk is just a reasonable, educated guess to make, right? Maybe she snuck around the house one day, found it by accident, and forgot that she did it. If it’s strange that she even knows what alcohol is and that it’s the culprit when Papa gets angry and belligerent, she doesn’t realize it.

No, none of it strikes her as odd until she notices that she knows things about people and things that she has absolutely no business knowing. Just as she knows that two plus two equals four or that the sun will rise tomorrow, she knows that the Uchiha baker from the market, along with all his family, will be dead in less than four years. Killed by his kin: a thirteen-year-old boy under orders by the village leaders. 

She gets in the habit of people-watching. To her mother’s chagrin, she’ll sneak out of the house and climb the tree in the backyard, prop herself up on one of the branches and observe the neighbors going about their daily lives.

She may not know what old man Tazu from across the street will have for dinner tonight, but she does know that he’ll be getting a letter from his grandnephew in a few months. A shinobi on a long term mission. He’ll be exclaiming his joy to the neighbors in when it happens, ever-present worry abated for at least a little while.

She couldn’t begin to guess when her mother’s next bowel movement will be, but she knows she’ll be hiding a bruise on her jaw from one of father’s drunken tirades under some makeup in sometime this April.

 _But if it were true psychic ability, then wouldn’t there also be knowledge of multiple versions of events?_ She reasons. _All the different possible ways an event could happen with even the slightest changes?_

With time, she learns that this strange ability is not infallible neither is whatever knowledge she has infinite. Sometimes she asks herself a question and there is no answer. Or sometimes the answer is vague and cloudy. She recalls images the same way. It’s as if there’s a book residing in her mind with the experiences, thoughts, and knowledge of someone else. It all culminates into a single timeline of set events.

Sakura is five years old when she finally musters up the courage to learn about herself.

She starts at the end and works her way to the beginning.

She wonders, _Why do I know all this? How?_

 _A last-ditch effort at saving the world,_ her mind answers back, _coming back and changing events enough to make a difference._

And Sakura doesn’t really get it at first. When she digs deeper into the well of her mind, she finds what she’s looking for.

An attempt to travel through time.

And apparently, it didn’t work. Not the way they’d intended, at any rate.

A group of adults. Some young, some old. A few she remembers from the times she’s accidentally come across memories of herself, something she’s avoided until now. If she delved further, she’d undoubtedly be able to learn more about them, but she can do that later, so she focuses on the memory at hand for the moment.

It was supposed to bring back the consciousness as well, not just an amalgam of memories and thoughts.

She remembers a blonde man, bright like the sun. _Naruto_ , her mind supplies.

Memories of a fond, tender, loving emotion accompany the name. Hope, faith, and devotion. The intensity nearly chokes her. There’s envy, guilt, sadness, and too much for little, young Sakura to handle. The memories are pressing on her.

If she allows herself to look for a second, she sees little memories shared between them. Moments that nurtured that deep bond. Days at Ichiraku. Fond exasperation at his antics. Snapshots of inspirational speeches that gave her hope when all seemed lost. A hand to hold when she was scared, a shoulder to cry on in her grief. She wonders for a moment if this man was perhaps her lover, but finds nothing of the sort when she searches for it. _Friend_ , her mind says. _The best_.

Deciding to shift focus, she’s bombarded again by a host of thoughts, emotions, and memories.

Dark hair, tall, and pale, and beautiful, and _Sasuke_.

The emotions that accompany his image are just as intense, but more complicated. There are memories of that profound, tender, desperate, almost _obsessive_ love there. A tired yet persistent yearning as well. It conflicts with the pain, bitterness, sting of rejection, and betrayal throbbing underneath it all. Sakura dives a little deeper on impulse, curiosity driving her and comes to know another name: _Sarada_. Their… daughter?

Suddenly, there’s a brief memory of profound grief. _Deceased_ , her mind fills in the blank. _Brought down a building to buy her teammate time and was crushed under the rubble._ This is supposedly their child but when she searches further, she finds no intimacy between her future self and this “Sasuke” man. All she finds are years of loneliness. More and more resentment from before building through the years. She doesn’t quite know what to make of it and she’s scared of what more she’ll find if she tries to look at actual memories of him. Her mind doesn’t supply an answer to what the person meant to her like it did with Naruto, so she resurfaces from him and shifts focus again.

There’s another man. Familiar like the others. Taller and older than them, silver hair, _Kakashi_.

Sakura isn’t surprised to find memories of gentle love for this man as well. Though this feeling is calmer. Steady. It took longer, developed more in the very late teens and onwards. But she is surprised to find some resentment there for him as well. There’s yearning as well, though different in nature to the one her future self felt for the Uchiha.

The anger and bitterness aren’t as strong as it was for Sasuke, so Sakura reluctantly chances a deep look at memories shared with this man. _Sensei_. She’d been overlooked and ignored. Yearned for acknowledgment by him, but she hadn’t been good enough. A civilian girl playing at being ninja. He’d never said it to her face, but her cheeks would flush at team meetings because she was certain that he’d been thinking it. He’d plainly favored teaching the two boys over her.

The two boys…

 _Oh_ , she thinks. _This was my team_.

They stand together along with others. Sakura keeps herself from looking too closely at the others. She needs to focus on the answer to her original question. Beautiful, intricate markings are on the ground. _A seal,_ her mind answers without prompting.

She’d been chosen for this because of her low reserves. Rock Lee would have been the best option, but he’d died a month earlier. With her _Strength of a Hundred_ seal emptied, she’d been the best candidate.

There’s something about having a lot of chakra making it too difficult to slip through the slim holes in time. Or… dimensions? Too complicated for Sakura to understand yet. An inanimate item, animal, or civilian human would be easiest, but they’d have limited capacity or understanding of the situation.

It had been a risk. Multiple possible ways for it to end. The ideal had been that Sakura would end up back in time with her conscious mind intact along with her physically older body. There was also the chance that she would go back and possess her younger self. Less ideal, but at least her mind would still be whole.

Another possibility was that she would die when they activated the seal.

Sakura thinks that, in a way, that’s exactly what happened. She knows that the original Sakura is dead. Or rather, her consciousness didn’t survive the way they had hoped. She received memories of events, emotions, thoughts, and some personality traits from the woman, but her mind is still that of a five-year-old. Though perhaps more advanced than it should be with the chakra transference and sheer amount of knowledge. She is not that woman. Not a medic-nin, not a mother, not a kunoichi.

The reason for coming back. _Kaguya. The Otsutsuki,_ her brain mantras.

It’s scary and stressful, so Sakura decides that’s enough for now.

In the following months, she revisits the memories regularly. Asks herself questions and searches her mind for more answers. Answers about her family, her future friends, her village.

The picture it paints is dismal.

Prejudice, betrayal, defections, power corruption, murder attempts on and from her, war, death, aliens, ghosts from the past, gods on earth, the end of everything. 

But little Sakura has no idea what to do. All this chaos is coming, but how can she possibly act on it? She thinks to maybe tell the Hokage, but the memories reveal the powerlessness and corruption of her leaders, so who is there to confide in? She knows that the other Sakura was developing a plan, but the memories of the last few weeks leading up to using the seal are extremely blurry or missing.

Little five-year-old Sakura thinks and thinks and _thinks_. Even with all her knowledge, it can be difficult to wrap her head around certain things. Abruptly faced with topics, concepts, and conclusions that usually takes even the most intelligent children years to develop, her brain struggles to keep up with it all. But auntie always tells her she’s very smart and stubborn as a mule, so she thinks she’ll be successful if she puts her mind to it.

Sakura, quiet to begin with so as not to tempt anger from her father, is like a ghost in her own home now. Her mother laments the change, but when she does speak, the woman is stupefied and unsettled by her advanced speech pattern. The girl just inwardly sighs. There are things that are more important to her now than appeasing the woman.

Destroying this Black Zetsu creature before it has the chance to summon Kaguya seems to be the best bet. _How_ she'll do that is an entirely separate matter, but it's good to have it as a long term goal for her to work towards. She's already formulating the framework of a plan. The details will be ironed out with time.

She spends half the year grappling with the memories. Combing through everything, tackling them at all angles, and memorizing any detail she can. She doesn’t know if this ability to recall information is a permanent one, so she doesn’t take any chances.

She draws and writes in her journal. Rewrites the story in her head in a childish way, so no one is alerted to the true meaning behind it. She doubts that any of these shinobi will care about what an insignificant little civilian girl will have to say, but is careful regardless.

She draws the people she came to know. Jots down everything the other Sakura learned as a student of the Godaime. Remembers the meetings she was allowed to be present for or eavesdrop on over the years because of nepotism and favoritism from the Hokage. Cases she figured out by being nosy and breaking into the classified archives when anyone thought she wasn’t important enough to be let in on certain sensitive intelligence. Records the secrets finally revealed to her by her teammates, colleagues, and several kage during the sleepless nights of the war. Finally deemed worthy of hearing them by being one of the last people around to listen.

Next, she shuffles through anything she can recall about being a shinobi and drudges up everything she knows about medical ninjutsu.

She's too weak at the moment to save herself let alone the world.

She doesn’t think she wants to be medic-nin like the other Sakura. She gave of herself over and over again until there was barely anything left. The sacrifices were never appreciated and once the people who came to her had gotten what they’d wanted, she was forgotten all over again. Only wanted around when someone needed to use her. Bleeding life and chakra into anyone in need who came her way for years on end.

No. Everything in her roils against the thought.

The idea of walking down that same desolate path makes her feel dread in the pit of her stomach. She’d still like to heal people, but there’s no drive for her to choose it as a main profession.

She begins training slowly, then works her way through.

She wishes she had shuriken and kunai to practice precision, but asking for them would set off flags too soon. She uses a couple of father’s old, forgotten play darts from the cellar for practice in the meantime.

Her chakra control is good. Not as excellent as she knows it can be – it’s distorted now, more yin than yang compared to what she remembers, feels different than how it’s supposed to at this age - but it motivates her to know that the potential is there. Her shortcomings can be fixed with time and effort, both things she has in abundance at the moment.

So, she gets to work.

She gets the leaf exercise down quickly and progresses to sliding it across different areas of her body. 

Stretches her reserves at every chance she gets.

By the end of her fifth year, she’s already capable of walking up walls and on water - she’d practiced in the bathtub whenever she had the opportunity. Had managed to knit together the skin of a fish after she’d perforated it's side with a knife. With that level of chakra control, she was soon able to practice using her chakra to enhance her speed and strength.

She always does her exercises when she’s alone and in private, afraid of calling attention to herself from her parents or a certain village elder.

Ultimately, she doesn’t think it’s a good idea to stifle herself to avoid suspicion. It may have worked for Shikamaru and other Nara, but he had a clan backing him, so no one questioned the intelligence and skill hiding underneath the seeming disinterest and laziness.

She doesn’t have that privilege. No one is going to give her the benefit of the doubt, so she still has to prove herself to be considered worthwhile. Fine. So be it. But not yet. First, she has to get into the Academy and build some connections.

If there's anything the memories have taught her, it's that effort and skill is only half the battle. It's _who_ you know that matters most. 

The original Sakura had managed to rise a bit in social status by a series of events which were possible only because she managed to be put on a team with political juggernauts like Naruto and Sasuke. Of course, she was innocent and hadn't fully understood her advantageous position at the time. Social climbing in the shinobi world is notoriously difficult, especially for clanless, civilian-borns. The social classes are nearly set in stone. Those with power and prestige are shrewd with sharing any of their influence and most harbor a low-level of disdain or disregard for civilian commoners.

She'll be going into with a better concept of what to expect and how to maneuver herself in their spaces. Part of her feels somewhat devious for being so calculative, but she stomps down the guilt as soon as it crops up. She can't afford to be a bleeding heart. To make it in this world, she'll have to be ruthless about self-advancement.  

It’s a month after her birthday during dinner that Sakura tells her parents about her decision to become a shinobi.

No one is happy about it.

Her father is dismissive and believes her incapable. Voice filled with mocking disdain as he goes on to educate her on how stupid her goals are. Her mother has such a disappointed expression on her face that Sakura has to avert her eyes from shame. Her cheeks are stinging with anger and embarrassment.

“Sakura-chan… That’s not- You’re not built for something like that. You’re a girl,” her mother tries to reason. “Haven’t you ever seen the scars on some of those kunoichi? No good man will want to marry you with those. And it’s so risky! I only want what’s best for you. I’m sorry, but you can’t be a kunoichi, dear.”

Sakura’s eyes are burning. She had known this would happen, but she’d hoped that it would be different somehow because _she’s_ different.

Right?

Weak. Useless. Pathetic. Replaceable.

How many people believed that about her? About the _other_ Sakura?

According to the information she's remembered in the past year: everyone.

Never anyone’s first choice. Never good enough. Nothing she did ever was.

Not her chakra. _Small reserves, unremarkable._

Not her skills. _Not glorious or fancy enough. Her medical ninjutsu only appreciated when needed, scoffed at when not._

Not her lineage. _Clanless, common, no kekkei-genkai, no bloodlimit, no clan techniques._

Not her hair. _Too eye-catching. The heated iron comb she uses to press the gentle waves from it every morning – even this young, a 'gift' from mother – is still warm._

Not her body. _Forehead too large, chest too flat, thighs too thick._

Not her love. _Rejected and unrequited. Even bearing a child wasn’t enough._

This is who she’s supposed to be? _This_ is what she has to look forward to?

Well, forget them. She is _not_ replaceable and she _is_ good enough. After all, who’s the only one that was able to be sent back here?

Some of the best shinobi in the world were there at the end and _none_ of their prestigious lineages or fancy kekkei-genkai could save the world. In fact, _she_ was their best bet: The oh-so-weak, useless civilian-born woman with a last name so common it was basically worthless. Now _she's_ the special one, so the elitists can sit there and seethe. To hell with the condescension and the dismissiveness.

So, she's a clanless civilian.

So, what?

It's not a crime to be one. She shouldn't have to repent for being average. Every clan started from somewhere. They didn't simply manifest, fully-formed, out of the ether. 

She isn’t that Sakura. The girl who tried but never graduated from just watching as those she loved threw themselves into danger. The girl who had to stay on the sidelines and watch as her teammates morphed into veritable demigods. Had power practically thrown at their feet as they bludgeoned their way through the elemental nations while she had to scrape and claw her way to even a fraction of the same level of relevance. The woman who stayed in her place with quiet acceptance and even quieter resentment.

Sakura won’t be. She refuses. No one gets to decide for her what she can and can’t do.

She has one huge advantage that the original Sakura never had the pleasure of having.

She knows the future. Well, _a_ future, but it’s more than enough. They say that knowledge is power. Well, Sakura _knows_ so many secrets, she has the power to potentially flip the entire shinobi world on its head. Has so many life skills under her belt that she's already leaps and bounds ahead of her peers. The odds are in her favor.

And she _is_ different. At this age, the original Sakura only felt heavily discouraged and temporarily mildly placated by her mother’s words. There wasn’t any of this righteous indignation. But that Sakura didn’t realize how much she was being wronged, didn’t realize the injustice of her situation yet.

The natural childish shyness and submissiveness are still there but every day it’s being increasingly overpowered by her will to be more than this.

Apparently, in the initial timeline, the other Sakura had timidly pleaded and begged to be able to go to the Academy. Wormed her way into it by endless supplications to her mother. She’d finally signed and got father to do so while he was drunk, but suffered the man's wrath for it in the end.

Sakura may not think much of her mother after what she remembers – spineless and weak-willed; the woman’s entire worldview was riddled with internalized misogyny and she let father get away with far more than he should, but her perspective was common among civilian women and there’s only so much she can expect when someone has been raised to believe what she does – but she doesn’t like the idea of someone else paying the price for her choices.

And if she’s going to try going down a different path than the original Sakura, then what better time is there to start than now?

She’s nervous and her palms are sweaty. This will be the first time she’s ever stood up for herself in this life. Hopefully, it will be the first of many.

Her chopsticks are still in one hand and her bowl is being held in the other, but she focuses with all her might to recreate what she’s been practicing for the past month. Her indignation drives her body to obey her will and a chakra string sprouts out of her pinky. It’s clumsy – she’s using too much chakra and the consistency of the string fluctuates - but it’ll be enough. She quickly wraps it around her father’s bottle of sake, throws it up, and crashes it against the ceiling.

The cries of surprise from her parents as the shards of tinted glass rain down are pleasing to hear and she fights down a smug grin. She's scared out of her mind for the retaliation that's sure to follow, but also so proud her heart feels ready to burst.

Now dowsed in alcohol, her parents turn to look upon her in bewilderment and shock.

Sakura smothers the instinctive quiver in her voice and tilts her chin up confidently. 

“I wasn’t asking for permission." 

 

* * *

 

The following week, the receptionist working the front desk of the Academy looks on in confusion as a pink-haired girl sporting bruises all over her face flashes him a painfully wide, joyful smile and merrily skips her way out of the building after handing him an admissions form for the Academy with both her parents’ signatures.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The author's note I wrote up details what to expect from this story. It became a bit too long, so I created a separate document on Quip. It's a document sharing/collaboration site, so it's safe (for those who were wondering). [Here's the link to the note.](https://darksideofthemoon.quip.com/7t2cAJTb8EeT/Dark-Side-of-the-Moon-Chapter-1-Author-Note)
> 
> If you have any questions at all, feel free to comment below or email me at **_asingleheartsings@aol.com_**. Hope you tune in for the next chapter! Until next time~


	2. The Academy

To say that father was displeased with her actions would be an understatement.

The arguing and fighting had gotten intense. Despite her progress and foreknowledge, she’s still physically petite and had only practiced with neutral chakra exercises before the altercation.

He’d taken out the full strength of his rage on her. Reaching over the table quickly and dragging her across all the dishes and cutlery. There was ringing in her ears and she remembers hearing crying – probably mother’s – off to the side.

Unfortunately, lashing out verbally at her father is much different than physically defending herself against him. The swiftness of his violence stunned her and it was a struggle to break through the mental block telling her she couldn’t and shouldn’t harm a member of her family.

It took a few direct pummels to the face for her survival instincts to kick in.

The look on father’s face had been priceless when she hit him with a chakra enhanced punch straight through the drywall.

Her heart was pounding loudly in her chest with fear, fists shaking as she held them up in a stance the original Sakura has learned from her shishou, but – underneath the cold terror – a shining light of courage she didn’t know she was capable of feeling.

She’d thought for a moment that he had been knocked unconscious – _or dead_ , her mind inserts haughtily – but when mother had rushed over to check on him, his groan of pain ascertained his physical wellbeing.

Ultimately, Sakura supposes she came out of the fight victorious. She’s never seen that fear on her father’s face, not in her timeline or in the memories of the original Sakura.

At the moment, the climate of the Haruno household in the aftermath is... tense, to say the least.

Father is obviously furious with her but is also afraid of what she’ll do in retaliation if he becomes violent with her once again. The situation cannot stand as is. His resentment at the insubordination and power imbalance in his own home will undoubtedly come to a breaking point.

How his vengeance will manifest is anyone’s guess, but she’ll cross that bridge when she gets to it.

Mother is an entirely different issue. The woman is just utterly terrified of her now. Terrified and disappointed. She’s been avoiding Sakura like the plague ever since the incident. Speaks only when obligated to like when letting her know that dinner is ready. Their interactions are cold and short, the woman avoids her eyes now as though it pains her to look at her daughter.

In another life, Sakura might have felt guilty - and she supposes that she _does_ a little bit – but to her surprise, the most that she can muster up is a deep feeling of annoyance.

After learning everything she knows now, her parents’ reactions ring as melodramatic and tiresome. As time passes by, they both just seem so...  _small_ in relation to everything else.

Part of her is disturbed at how quickly she’s detaching from them. After all, these are her parents, regardless of how imperfect they are. Perhaps her father is useless for everything except providing food and shelter, but her mother – mentally backward though she may be – nurtured and cared for her. Loved her in her own mother-like way. So, Sakura should be feeling more, right?

There should be more grief at their rejection, but she just can’t find it in her to care as much as she should. Before delving into the original Sakura’s memories, she’d have been devastated by how the family dynamic has shifted, but all she finds is a waxing sense of apathy. She feels that she’s drifting farther and farther away from them with each month that passes by and with every memory she scrounges up in her mind.

The amount of horrors she has made herself to face and her exposure to certain uncomfortable truths that no child should be aware of has changed her irrevocably.

Part of her regrets venturing down this path. By opening Pandora’s Box, she’s destroyed her innocence. However, there’s no point wavering now. She’s already done it and the clock is ticking. Her innocence is a small price to pay for her future as well as the world's.

Now, here she stands. In front of the Academy and heart thumping in her chest.

This is where it all begins.

The larger, soft, gentle hand holding Sakura’s own is warm and lightly sweating from dread. Sakura knows that her mother would rather be anywhere other than here with her “scary” child, standing in front of the Academy.

Many other parents wait at the gates with their children as well, offering some parting words of encouragement. She recognizes a few of the clan heads amidst the crowd, but forces herself not to stare and only allows her eyes to graze over them.

The sounds of the gates opening prompt all of the gathered villagers to straighten their posture.

She looks up at her mother. The woman hands her bento box with her lunch, gaze averted, and still avoiding her daughter’s eyes. Sakura feels the urge to say something, but her tongue is heavy lead in her mouth.

Her mother turns and leaves before she can utter a word. _Perhaps it’s for the best_ , she thinks as she watches her mother’s form get lost in the crowd.

Turning back towards the front of the school, a teenage chunin is gesturing towards the children, leading the way to their destination through the gates. She takes in the sights that she’s only seen when burrowing into her mind. It’s equally disorienting and exhilarating to see it all in person.

Once all the children have gathered in the courtyard beyond the gates, a man ascends to a dais. White and red robes. The Sandaime Hokage.

She can’t say she thinks much of him with everything she knows. An old man, obviously in the position longer than he’d ever intended or hoped for, allowing rampant corruption to spread. With the years, he conceded more and more of his control to the council, unwilling and unmotivated to try and wrestle it back from them.

On one hand, she can understand the fatigue that must come from holding a high-stress, highly demanding job for such a long time, responsibilities inevitably fall to the wayside once you settle into that retirement age. With the considerable amount of power he’s given Danzo to carry out the less palatable decisions, he obviously isn’t unfeeling or numb to the horrors of the village’s corruption. At least, not entirely. He cares enough to not want to face them. 

However, he turns his head and allows it all to happen without stepping in, even though it is within his power to do so if he put forth enough effort, which makes him almost equally as complicit as the perpetrator in her mind.

When the chunin introduces the old man as the Hokage, the children quiet down and look up in awe. For most, if not all, this is the first time seeing their esteemed leader in person. Even though they can’t truly understand the power of the man who stands before them, the level of deference the other shinobi show him establishes his importance in the minds of the young students. Purposely done, of course. The indoctrination starts early. 

“Children of Konoha. Today you embark upon an incredibly important and glorious path. I can already see the Will of Fire burning brightly in each of you-”

And that’s where she tunes out for the next three minutes. She fears that the more she hears, the angrier she’ll get, so she just allows her eyes to glaze over until he finishes his diatribe.

Once the speech ends, the Hokage descends from the dais and is escorted away by a group of Anbu. The parents who stayed behind and watched, finally depart from their children. She can feel the nervous energy emanating from many of them. For most of the new students, civilian and clan-born alike, this is the first time they’ve truly been apart from their parents.

They’re ushered into the building and a chunin calls out a list of the names and designated room numbers of the new students.

They all form lines for the different assigned classrooms and Sakura isn’t surprised or worried that she’s been shuffled into an all civilian-born class.

This happened to the original Sakura and, within a few months, she was bumped over into a mixed and more intensive class after showcasing her intelligence. Coming to the class later in the game is one of the things that contributed to her being bullied so heavily. Trying to fit in to a new classroom environment after everyone has already formed their own little cliques made her the odd one out in more ways than one.

Sakura intends to be moved up faster than that. Ideally, she can manage it within a week, two at most.

She needs to start networking as early and quickly as possible if she wants to be able to stand out while avoiding Danzo’s clutches. Kidnapping children is imminently more difficult if they have large, widespread social ties. She needs _people_. People to miss her, to stir up a fuss if she vanishes into thin air. She may be able to deter him she builds enough connections with well-known, important clans. At the very least, he’ll be more cautious which will buy her time.

When they’ve all settled into the classroom and the teacher starts going over shapes and colors, it only reaffirms the necessity of moving up faster. If not for networking then simply for her own sanity.

It takes the teacher a while to realize, but after two days of Sakura raising her hand every couple minutes – alerting him that she’s done with the rudimentary worksheets – she notices the sharpness in his gaze after he scans the papers and notices that every answer is correct.

He gives her more worksheets. Basic addition and subtraction.

She’s done within a minute.

Next, multiplication and division.

And so it goes. 

When she finishes the grammar, vocabulary, and basic algebra worksheets, he excuses himself for a moment then returns with a different set of worksheets.

These are similar to the ones given out in the final year at the Academy. Chakra Theory, History, Advanced Geometry, Advanced Language and Grammar, Calculus, Biology, Politics, Tactics.

She has all the answers to these questions memorized, but it would be stupid to write all the correct responses on there and the teacher almost certainly doesn't expect that of her. At best, they may move her too far ahead. At worst, they’ll think she’s a spy.

She decides to answer all the language and math questions correctly. Those are easy enough to explain away since she could simply have a natural affinity for those subjects. She decides to get about sixty percent of the science and chakra theory questions right, as well as forty percent of the social sciences. The rest of the questions are either left blank, partially answered, or deliberately wrong.

Admittedly, she is still showing off a bit. She’s getting considerably more answers right than the original Sakura did, yet not so much that she courts Danzo’s attention.

When Sakura finishes the worksheets, the school day has already ended. She didn’t even realize that the other students had been dismissed.

She hands the papers to him before jettisoning the classroom.

The next day, before she’s even able to get to her desk, the teacher calls her to the front. She follows him outside the classroom and - after the door closes behind them – he squats to her eye level and hands her a short slip of paper. On it is a different, more familiar room number.

Sakura looks up at him, feigning confusion.

“There’s nothing I can teach you, brat. You’ve been transferred to a different class. Go down the hallway and make a right, it’s the third door to your left.” He ruffles her hair for a short second and utters a quick “good luck” before leaving her alone in the hallway.

She makes her way to her new class and hesitates outside the door for a moment before finally knocking. There’s a brief pause before the door slides open and reveals an equally familiar and foreign face.

The memories she studied the most were concentrated on the last couple of decades, so she's used to a much older looking Iruka. However, here is, in his late teens. Fresh-faced and young. Considering his age, their class must have been his first crop of students.

Sakura feels her natural shyness quickly manifesting when he looks at her imploringly.

No, she can’t let this happen. She can’t be the shy, quiet wallflower or everything will fall apart. Can’t let herself fall into that pattern of behavior.

She gathers her courage – the same kind that allowed her to punch her father through that wall – straightens her back, and raises her head up high.

“I’m a transfer student, sensei. From the civilian class,” she says. Clear and even.

His eyes light up in recognition, “Oh, he told me about that, didn’t he? It’s good that you came early, we haven’t started class yet.”

To say that walking into that classroom was overwhelming would be an understatement. So many faces, somehow well-known and entirely new.

There’s a quiet hush in the classroom that speaks more of their unfamiliarity with each other than her interruption. Good, she’s made it early enough for everyone to still be in social limbo.

 _Well, **almost** everyone,_ she thinks when she spots a certain blonde sitting together with a small group of girls.

She scans the rows of desks and catalogues the rest of the infamous Rookie Nine.

Ino.

Shikamaru.

Chōji.

Kiba.

Shino.

Hinata.

Sasuke.

Naruto.

She knows so much about them. Hopes, wishes, dreams, fears.

There's a pang of guilt for having all this intimate information. This knowledge isn’t meant for her to hold. She didn’t earn the trust it took to learn all this about them, the original Sakura did. But there’s nothing she can do about it, so she pushes the feeling away and refocuses her attention.

“Everyone, this is a new transfer student. Be sure to treat her kindly,” Iruka announces to the class. The eyes of all the young students are boring into her. He turns to her and gives a welcoming smile, “Introduce yourself.”

Even at this young of an age, children can pick up on weakness and naturally gravitate towards the confident. These are her future comrades, she can’t afford to be dismissed.

“I’m Haruno Sakura. A pleasure to meet you all,” she says. Her voice clear and firm. She channels the confidence that she knows the original Sakura gained with age. Thankfully, the more she does it, the easier it is to do.

After a beat of silence that follows her statement, Iruka claps his hands and orders everyone to get to their seats. 

She quickly tries to work out where to start. 

Naruto and Sasuke are a no-go for now.

Getting too close to the village jinchūriki will automatically have her labeled a person of interest. Doing so as soon as she transfers into his class will definitely place her on some sort of watchlist if not considered a spy straight out the gate. She sends a quick prayer of forgiveness his way for making the choice to stay away for now even whilst knowing just how lonely the boy is. She'll make it up to him in time.

Equally, socializing with an Uchiha - being as politically sensitive as they are at the moment in the aftermath of the Kyūbi attack – also places a bit too much attention on her more quickly than she’s willing to risk. She also doesn’t want to set herself up as an enemy of every single girl in the class considering how hard they’ll all be falling for him soon.

Not to mention, the class is already shamelessly segregated between the boys and girls, so it’d be odd to start off with them let alone Kiba, Shino, Shikamaru, or Chōji.

She thinks about sitting with Ino, but the girl works so fast that she’s already formed her own separate group with its own little hierarchy. She has no doubt that Ino sits at the top of the pack. She’s a natural socialite and effortlessly confident, has a habit of outshining those around her and unintentionally bulldozing over others’ personalities. Unacceptable, since Sakura has no intention of being a mere lackey.  

There’s no doubt they’ll become close at some point – she was a great friend to the original Sakura and serves as a perfect gateway to having the Ino-Shika-Cho trio as allies, too good of an opportunity to pass up - but not before Sakura establishes herself in her own right. She has to get used to being social and confident first else she risks being socially dominated by her.

Sakura deliberates for a bit before deciding to sit between a boy from the Ōta clan - one of the smaller, unremarkable ones in the village - and Hinata Hyūga.  

Hinata is timid and shy. It’s blatantly obvious before she even utters a single word.

Her head is down, nearly parallel to the desk. Bangs covering her eyes, fidgeting and twiddling her thumbs. The image tugs at Sakura’s heartstrings. The girl had always been gentle and kind. Never truly settled into the harsh and cruel shinobi life, nevertheless, she carried a quiet, admirable strength.

She looks so nervous, helpless, and lonely. A child in desperate need of a friend.

_Perfect._

Sakura makes her way towards her. When she reaches the chair beside the girl, she rests a gentle hand on her shoulder.

At the physical contact, Hinata gasps and jumps like she’s just been electrocuted. Her wide eyes dart up to Sakura’s face, startled and confused.

Sakura doesn’t want to scare her off, so she smiles softly, “Do you mind if I sit next to you?”

Hinata’s brain seems to stall for a bit before she stutters out, “N-n-no, that’s f-fine.”

 “It’s only been a couple days since school started. I didn’t miss anything too interesting, did I?” she asks, trying to urge the girl to talk.

There’s that surprised expression on Hinata’s face again before she stumbles out a response, “N-no. W-w-we haven’t done much y-yet.”

She internally sighs before sitting down. This is going to take some finesse. Hinata is naturally deathly quiet, so any conversation will have to be initiated on Sakura’s end. 

“Oh, thank the Sage. I’m Sakura, by the way. But I already introduced myself earlier. What’s your name?”

And is it really so shocking that Sakura’s talking to her? Because the girl keeps looking at her like she’s an alien every time she utters two words. Even if Sakura didn’t have the future knowledge at her disposal, she’d still be able to discern how the Hyūga clan must be treating her if she’s so surprised by some simple common courtesy. Has she never had the chance to socialize with anyone her own age?

Well, in that case, the two of them are in the same boat since Sakura doesn’t have much experience with other children either.

Sure she has the original Sakura’s memories to base her interactions on, but that’s about it. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise for both of them. 

“H-Hinata. H-Hyūga Hinata,” she chirps out.

“Hinata…” The girl blushes when her name is repeated. Sakura's smile feels more genuine when she responds, “That’s a beautiful name.”

And it truly is: A sunny place.

As she watches the girl’s face turn a rather brilliant shade of red, Sakura thinks that perhaps, with some nurturing and kindness to ease her out of her shell, she can get her to live up to the name one day.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Baby steps, baby steps. Sakura's playing the Long Game~ 
> 
> I always felt that canon-Sakura breaking off Ino's friendship was about more than just Sasuke. Ino naturally has a very strong, overpowering personality. There's nothing wrong with that but if yours can't match hers, it's very easy to be outshined and fade into the background which is exactly what Sakura-2.0 wants to avoid. Maybe it's just headcanon, but I saw it as canon-Sakura perhaps feeling stifled being in Ino's shadow and leaving the friendship was the only way for her to form her own identity apart from her and be her equal. (Idk, I was in a codependent friendship as a child with me being in the role of Sakura, so I'm probably projecting.) 
> 
> She "knows" how to be confident from canon-Sakura's memories, but she's technically still a child and her natural childlike disposition to be shy and quiet is difficult to overcome without constantly being pushed to do the opposite, which is why I believe that Hinata is a good starting point for her. Not just for networking, but for safely getting in the habit of socializing, prompting conversation, leading, and general confidence. She's the "star" of the friendship, so she has no choice but to get comfortable being in the foreground. Essentially: Faking it 'til she makes it. 
> 
> Anyway, thanks so much for all the wonderful reviews guys! They were all so sweet and thoughtful~  
> I actually wrote way more than this for the second chapter but the pacing was getting wonky, so I basically just cut it in half. Chapter 3 is pretty much done except for some editing work, so you can expect the next installment pretty soon! Hope you enjoyed this one, see you next time!


	3. Building Blocks

For the next week, as the class starts to settle in, Hinata becomes less and less nervous with their interactions.

Sakura sits by her every morning and greets her with a joyful grin. Sometimes she doesn’t respond to the side comments Sakura makes during class, but she spots the girl’s hesitant little smiles out the corner of her eye.

The information that her brain supplies from _Before_ tells her that physical interaction is good too. The release of oxytocin builds attachment. Casual touching is generally frowned upon in Konoha as well as several other places in the Elemental Nations. It can be deemed as impolite and carries certain implications, not to mention that it can be outright dangerous in a military nation like theirs where so many people are walking around with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Nevertheless, it’s a useful tactic and there’s assuredly more leeway as a child for this type of thing, so brushing shoulders and a gentle touch here and there helps ease things with the girl too. Well, after she got over the shock at the theoretical impropriety.

Hinata had previously been eating her lunch alone in the classroom. Sakura indulges the quirk and sticks with her the first couple days, but ultimately she talks her into eating outside in the playground with the other children. Hinata is wary and extremely nervous at first, but her tension eases with time.

They get into a routine and Hinata slowly becomes familiar and accepting of her presence. Sakura enjoys her company. Sitting with her during class is like the eye of the hurricane with their class filled to the brim with rambunctious children.

However, their friendship doesn’t really make a turn until Sakura arrives at school early one morning and spots a few students bullying the girl. She surprised herself by the amount of sheer rage she felt at finding them being so needlessly cruel to Hinata who’d done nothing at all to deserve that kind of treatment.

After beating them up thoroughly and efficiently, Hinata seems to look at her differently now, although she remains quiet as she’s ever been.

The curriculum of the class is fairly easy. The general education classes like math, reading, science, and social studies are all a higher level than what she’d been taking in the initial class, but they’re still ridiculously easy given the knowledge she has. Outside of simple bookwork, they practice things that Sakura already mastered in her free time like the Leaf Exercise.

It’s in the middle of the second week when Iruka calls them out in the yard for a general physical evaluation.

Turns out that it sounds fancier than it is. They’ll just be doing a mile run, learning academy-level kata, and a short, mild spar.

Sakura’s stamina is higher since she started practicing on her own. After the altercation with her father, she went into overdrive with training. She still didn’t showcase anything too impressive, but she no longer had to hide strength building exercises and endurance training. She also already knows how to channel chakra into her muscles to enhance her speed.

She’s surprised to find that she’s the fastest of the girls and beats most of the boys when she finishes in second place – tying with Naruto - during the mile run, both falling behind Sasuke.

At first, she’s confused because there’s no way she should have beaten so many clan heirs.

However, it occurs to her that the village is at peace. The parents have no real reason to push intensive training on their children, not to mention that they’re all so young. For the current clan heads who grew up during one war and participated in the other, it’s no wonder they’d want to allow their children some extra time to simply be kids. Which is, of course, in direct contrast to Sakura who has essentially been vigorously training with the threat of impending doom looming over her head.

She wonders if she’d ever be able to beat Naruto or Sasuke in speed. They naturally have an advantage from just being male. The chakra stores, testosterone, stamina, and bone structure are innately skewed in their favor, not just from their sex but from their lineage as well.

Some female shinobi, like Tsunade or Terumi Mei, are able to go head-to-head with male shinobi and come out on top nearly every time, so she knows that it’s possible. Whether or not it’s possible for _her_ is a mystery, however. She certainly intends to find out. 

When everyone is done and Iruka announces the placements, it garners some positive and negative attention from her classmates.

The girls – at least the ones not fawning over Sasuke at the moment - seem either envious or admiring. Many of the boys are surprised or angered by being outranked by a girl.

Kiba – who came in third place - is particularly incensed by her win.

“What the hell?! But you’re a girl! There’s no way you could beat me!” He stomps up to her, rage and disbelief apparent in his face.

The exclamation gathers the attention of the students and they quiet down to watch the confrontation.

She turns to him and raises a playful, haughty eyebrow, “No? But it looks like I just did.”

His face contorts and turns red in anger. She feigns a sweet, innocent smile and pats him on the shoulder, “Better luck next time, right, Kiba-chan?” She turns her head and quickly flashes a baiting, smug, little smirk that only he can see before leaving him to sputter incoherently. She hears a strangled and furious “ _chan?!_ ” before heading over to Hinata who’d been watching quietly. If Sakura recalls correctly, she’d been in sixth place.

“Wow, Sakura-chan, t-that was amazing,” her voice is filled with awe.

Sakura chokes out an embarrassed little giggle at the praise. Her scale of what constitutes as strong or impressive in the world of ninja is drastically skewed by her future knowledge, so she has no real idea of whether or not her skill is truly any good. All she knows is that it’s better than what the original Sakura could do at this point in time but still severely behind any of the great shinobi she’s seen in the memories.

Then again, she’s only six years old, so maybe she can be a bit easier on herself.

She’s about to thank Hinata for the compliment when she hears someone clearing their voice. She turns around to find . . . who was she again? Oh, Ami along with her little goons, Fuki and Kasumi. The terrible trio who’d regularly made fun of the original Sakura.

 _Joy_.

“Don’t get all cocky just ‘cause you beat us. You . . . you . . . big, ugly forehead!”

And Sakura has to keep herself from laughing at the lame insult. It doesn’t help that this girl looks inordinately pleased with herself. Yeah, this isn’t happening like the first rodeo.

“You think I have a big forehead?” Sakura asks solemnly and Ami’s grin gets wider, looking like the cat that caught the canary.

“Oh, yeah! Definitely the biggest I’ve ever seen,” she continues smugly and her lackeys fervently nod along with her. The gawking children snicker at her heckling.

Out of her peripheral vision, she sees Hinata’s horrified, stricken expression. But Sakura directs her attention back to Ami and gives a bright smile, “Oh my goodness, thank you so much! What a wonderful compliment.”  

The girl is shocked by her retort and seems at a loss for what to say, “Wha-? That wasn’t a compliment, you weirdo!”

“But it is! Haven’t you heard? A large forehead is a sign of beauty,” Sakura exclaims cheerily. She reaches out and pushes the girl’s bangs away, “But mine has nothing on yours. I think you may have the most gigantic forehead I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing. You should be proud.”

Ami stands there furious as the students watching the display start jeering and laughing at her. Probably not the outcome the girl had expected from her childish taunts. Even Fuki and Kasumi snicker a bit before submitting to silence after Ami levels a death-glare at them.

“You- You-!” The girl, obviously not knowing what to say to salvage her pride, attempts to lunge at Sakura.

Now, Sakura may not have much real-life experience fighting, but she knows enough to be able to dodge and cleanly sweep Ami’s feet out from under her.

Ami lands harshly on her backside and laughter of the children comes full force now that she’s been thoroughly embarrassed. Sakura can see the girl’s lips wobbling and eyes tearing up and, despite herself, feels pity for her.

She reaches down to help Ami stand up, but the girl slaps her hand away and turns to run away when a hand grabs the back of her jumper and lifts her off the ground.

“And just where do you think you’re going?” Iruka says while dangling Ami and Sakura wonders where on earth he’d been during this altercation. Come to think of it, why didn’t he step in earlier? Perhaps he wanted to see how they handled this conflict on their own?

He turns to Sakura, “I saw what happened, Sakura-chan. The only fighting that should be going on is sparring, and no sparring without supervision. Understand?”

He levels both of them with an expectant stare and they nod their heads in agreement.

Iruka lets Ami go then claps to get all the children to quiet down. He begins teaching the Academy kata. When it comes time for them to practice on their own, Iruka goes around correcting the students on their form.

Sakura already knows all the details of it and practiced it in the months leading up to attending school, so she allows her body to fall into the familiar motions.

When Iruka passes by her, he commends her form. Sasuke is in need of no correction either – a fact that makes his fangirls squeal. Shino and Hinata also receive high praise, though he does end up making a few corrections with them. Naruto, Kiba, Shikamaru, and a couple of children from the lesser clans have the absolute worst form of them all. Shikamaru’s is obviously due to just a lack of effort which is probably why Iruka doesn’t say much to him. Kiba and Naruto get the brunt of the scolding.

Afterward, they move on to the sparring.              

The matches are set up as a sort of mini-tournament where the winners of their designated spar go on to fight against another winner.

Shikamaru and Chōji are eliminated hilariously quickly. Naruto lasts longer than she expected. He has no finesse but his sheer energy and savagery is enough to overpower his opponents for a long while before he finally loses against Kiba. It’s no surprise that Sasuke comes out on top. Though she notes that Shino was a formidable opponent during the last duel. 

When it’s time for the girls to spar, she makes short work of them. Although Sakura makes certain to allow her sparring partner to get a few hits in, but she finds that Ino was easier to beat than she’d expected when paired with her after working through the weaker students. Then again, the girl has yet to learn and master her clan techniques or taijutsu and Sakura already knows her tricks and maneuvers from this time period so it’s understandable.

The sparring apparently coaxes some ferocity out of Hinata because, thankfully, she’s a challenge. She actually gets some hits in that don’t have to be feigned.

When Sakura thinks she’s shown enough weakness to not gain any suspicion, she gets serious. It’s a close call, but she actually manages to beat Hinata though the girl managed to block half the tenketsu in her left arm and one in her side.

Sakura and Sasuke are the final winners. Iruka instructs them to spar against each other.

Sakura’s completely lost on what to do in this scenario.

She hadn’t anticipated being pit against him. She’s already shown her aptitude in test scores, but that’s the same attribute the original Sakura had. She knows that she’s pushing the envelope in displaying so much physical adequacy.

The fact that she’s actually defeating clan heirs in the spars at all is sure to catch some attention from the higher-ups, but to defeat the Uchiha clan head’s son?

Sasuke makes up her mind for her when he launches into a barrage of attacks. She already knows that she’s not capable of outmatching his speed yet, and she can’t get anywhere near his strength without outing herself by using chakra enhancements, but she’s more agile than he is and has a working knowledge of the human body which far surpasses his own.

Sasuke is impatient.

It’s something she already realized from studying the original Sakura’s memories, but she wasn’t aware that it was present this early on. She assumed that his impatience developed because of his goal to defeat his brother, but it seems that it’s simply a natural personality trait.

His excessive pride and arrogance are apparent and she can tell that he’s already decided that he’s going to win this spar.

 _Asshole_.

With her constantly dodging his attacks, his impatience is quickly getting the best of him.

She roils at the thought of conceding the fight. The childish part of her that miraculously still exists desperately wants to show her worth and beat everyone into the ground. Prove all their preconceived notions about the useless, little civilian girl wrong. Destroy that smug pride nestled in Sasuke. However, it’s just way too dangerous at the moment. It’s too early in the school year. Too unexplainable. She’s too unknown and easily forgotten. Too ripe to be plucked by Danzo and his goons. She hasn’t networked enough to feel safe showing off.

 _Soon_ , she thinks.

She allows her body to make mistakes she could have caught and within a few short moments he has her on the ground and his arm pinning her neck.

She’s burning in anger and annoyance at her “loss” and but pushes to not be immature and show good sportsmanship by looking him in the eye while they make the Seal of Reconciliation.

* * *

 

The evaluation wrapped up quickly after that and, thankfully, it seems that she correctly gauged what skills she should and shouldn’t show evidenced by the fact that she hasn’t been hauled off to T&I nor has she been kidnapped by Root members in the following weeks.

Sakura finds that her performance and subsequently swallowed pride was all worth it when, in the following weeks, it’s evident the entire class dynamic has drastically changed.

There are a few class rankings. The spars are the only ones separated by gender and she sits comfortably at the top of the list in the academic portion and right behind Sasuke on the physical portion.

Soon, she’s both pleased and horrified to find that she has developed a fan club of sorts.

She’s decidedly uncomfortable with the pedestal she’s been put on. This never happened in the first timeline. She tries to hide her discomfort and handle the added attention with grace.

Girls whisper and stare. They are obviously unsure of how to approach her. She’s an unknown entity and the few times they witnessed any interaction between her and anyone other than Hinata, she hadn’t been the most personable.

That day of the evaluation is not the last time that Sakura’s has felt the need to defend the Hyūga. She isn’t going to pretend like she hasn’t heard the wretched things that some of the kids say about her. To them, her quietness makes her seem “creepy” and they bemoan her “freaky” pupil and iris-less eyes. That type of speech has halted since Sakura enforces their silence, however, the students obviously still hold the opinion, whether or not they speak it aloud.

Regardless of their fear, the girls start wearing cloth bands across the top of their heads as she does. Something she finds a bit strange since her reason for wearing it is a practical one – just to keep the hair shoulder-length hair out of her face while she figures out what the hell to do with her unruly tresses – yet her fellow students are seeing is as some kind of fashion statement. It does no harm, so she doesn’t discourage it.

The boys sneer. They’re at that age where every girl is gross. Even the ones who are obviously enamored with her. At first, they tried to get her attention the way boys with crushes notoriously treat girls they like: by poking, prodding, and generally teasing her. Something she was able to keep in check with some teasing of her own along with a few sprained wrists, however, today is different.

Wildflowers, obviously plucked from the edges of the playground, left on her desk for her to find in the morning. Hinata, who’d walked in with her, gasps at the sight. The oohs-and-aahs of the class threaten to bring a flush to her cheeks but she wills it down.

How should she respond to such a thing? What will reap the best benefits?

She’s annoyed at the attention it brings her and her automatic inclination is to promptly swipe them off her desk and hide from this. She also strangely feels the urge to find whoever left it and punch them for the embarrassment she’s trying not to feel.

But isn’t this what she wanted? Not necessarily the flowers or some kid crushing on her, but the attention. The adoration.

Aggression won’t work in this situation, neither will spazzing out and being awkward about it. If she wants to network and build connections, she can’t scare these kids off. She has to cultivate their image of her. Who will _Sakura_ be to them? To Konoha?

She’s already been a bit brash with the students in the past. Not just in fending off the students’ teasing but also in defending Hinata.

Technically, she could yield to her inclinations, throw out the flowers, and foster an even tougher reputation for herself. More thorn than blossom. Similar to Sasuke’s days in the Academy. However, such an image is hardly conducive to “building bonds” as Naruto would one day say. She’d have their admiration because of her prowess, but that would only keep everyone at arm’s length.

For what she needs to accomplish, their respect is not enough.

She thinks of her goal and tries to find a historical figure who fits somewhat close to what she wants to emulate. The first that comes to mind in the Yondaime.

A beautiful, tall man. Deadly and scarily proficient in battle and in academics. Records along with past and present public opinion show that he was extremely sociable and highly charismatic. Hailed as a genius throughout all the nations and yet… he was not arrogant. The perfect blend of confidence and humility. Many view him as a saint. An incorruptible legend.

Sakura knows better, of course. No man accomplishes what he did without knowing how to manipulate others. No man can become kage without getting their hands dirty regardless of how bright his smiles might have been or how personable he may have seemed. His estimated kills are a well-known number amongst fans of his. Being a shinobi automatically negates any claim of innocence on his part let alone a shinobi of his caliber.

The more she thinks about him, the more... _scary_ he seems. About a man who was so amiable and seemingly unaffected even after mowing down so many fellow human beings.

Pretty much all shinobi - save for freshly minted genin - are murderers but it tends to show in the way they speak and act. Being closed off, paranoid, stoic, or strangely eccentric is par for the course with shinobi. However, by all accounts, that darkness never seemed to permeate Namikaze’s aura at all. She idly wonders if he was perhaps a psychopath or maybe just unbelievably good at keeping how affected he was under wraps. 

Considering the strong network of clan heirs he managed to build as an orphan of a wiped-out, originally Kumo-native clan and the accomplishments he managed to make, she wonders if he was this calculative at her age. If he also saw the writing on the wall. Noticed the poisonous nepotism and realized the game he had to play to get to where he wanted to go.

 _Likely so_ , she thinks.

She doesn’t know whether she should feel validated or disturbed by the revelation.

Now, Sakura has no intention of becoming Hokage or being a Namikaze 2.0, however, there’s nothing wrong with taking a few tips from a master at the Game. If she’s going to do this – be this “socialite”– she can’t be distant, haughty, or unfeeling. Neither can she be cruel or uninviting.

She’s proven her mettle academically and physically. She’s already achieved their awe and has kindled the flames of inevitable “stardom” in the class. However, she can’t be so high up that no one can reach her. She needs their love and she has to allow it the room to flourish.

Part of her feels ridiculous at contemplating classroom politics so deeply, however, these are the foundations of her and their futures. She can’t afford to underestimate the relevance of these early days.

Sakura lets a soft smile spread across her face. “Oh, Hinata. Look.” She smoothly takes one of the flowers and grazes her eyes over it as though she’s admiring its beauty. The class is silent as she observes them. There are still roots and dirt attached stem and one of the leaves look trampled on.

She forces herself to look past that and see the beauty in the innocence of the gesture.

She doesn’t hate flowers. She supposes they’re beautiful enough. Fun to grow. Nice for aesthetic purposes. Dainty. Short-lived. Fragile. There to be gawked at.

The original Sakura had later-on resented being named after one. Sounded more like a curse than a blessing for a shinobi. Felt like more of a taunt when thinking about her more powerful teammates.

But that baggage doesn’t really fit with the narrative she’s trying to build here.

She recognizes the bloom. Cast-off memories from the original Sakura’s childhood of sleepovers spent with Ino, before their falling out. They’d gone through dozens of flowers. Their different colors and meanings. Created bouquets for themselves and their friendship. Bouquets where each flower represented an aspect of their personalities and what they admired about each other.

“A simple, common Phlox flower of the Polemoniaceae family. Blush pink, the same shade as my hair. They need no special care to flourish. Did you know they bloom all-year-round, Hinata? Before doing so, they’re horribly fragile and sensitive to climate but, once they’ve bloomed, they are resilient through the changing of the seasons. From the mild, warm spring to the harsh, unforgiving winter. Their shape is often associated with fire, suitable considering our Nation. They mean-”

“Support and understanding,” a voice chimes in. Sakura turns and sees Ino staring at her intensely. Her little group is confused yet stay silent.

“Love and unity of souls as well, of course,” Sakura rebuts, a knowing smirk creasing her face.

To the side, she sees Shikamaru has picked his head up from his feigned nap to watch their confrontation with bleary eyes.

Ino narrows her eyes and jumps up from her seat to make her way towards Sakura, “Daddy said that ‘Love’ is what people say a flower means when they don’t know anything about flowers.”

Sakura allows her smirk to morph into a wry smile, “Ah, but perhaps not in this case. In the earlier days, shinobi would adorn their armor with them. Wedged them in between the creases of metal and give them out to women who’d keep them company during the festivals held in their honor. Considering its history, ‘love’ is a fitting symbol, don’t you think? And I did say ‘unity of souls’ as well, remember?”

Sakura takes a couple of the flowers and deftly breaks off the roots and dirt, and tucks them into her red headband.

She flamboyantly poses in jest and turns to Hinata, “How do I look?”

Hinata, who seems caught off-guard at being so suddenly addressed, stammers, “C-cute, as always, S-Sakura-chan. They s-suit yo-”

Sakura, endeared by the girl’s awkwardness, quickly tucks a few of them behind Hinata’s ear before she’s finished talking. The girl slightly squeals in surprise at the contact then her face flushes pink when she touches her ear and feels the flower petals.

“Aww, I knew you’d outdo me with them on,” she lightly takes Hinata’s chin and lifts her head up, “Beautiful flowers for a beautiful girl.”

She’s aware how she’s being by blatantly teasing Hinata like this since she **_knows_** how flustered girl gets by compliments – evidenced by the lovely shade of ruby red her face is turning at the moment - but sometimes she just can’t help herself. She’s just way too easy to rile up.

While Hinata is imploding and stammering some sort of disbelieving babble, Sakura turns back to Ino who’s watching the scene with wry amusement.

Ino scrutinizes her face for a few moments, “Where’d you learn flowers?”

“Studying their meanings is a hobby of mine. Useful information for any kunoichi to learn,” Sakura answers. A half-truth. The original Sakura certainly got her fair share of knowledge from simply hanging around her. It became her hobby by proxy. “You seem pretty knowledgeable yourself. Do I have you to thank for the gift?”

Ino scoffs and looks at the flowers tucked in her hair, “As if. I’d know better than to give you flowers with dirt all over them.”  She seems strongly offended at the suggestion. “And I definitely wouldn’t have chosen a Phlox flower.”

That grabs Sakura’s attention, “Oh? And which flower would you choose for me then?”

Ino purses her lips for a second and looks off into the distance, feigning as though she’s thinking about her choice. The motion would be more convincing in the future but on a six-year-old child’s face, it only looked mildly comical, “Hmm. I don’t think I know you well enough to say.”

Sakura takes that as her opening and offers Ino the last phlox flower, “Well, maybe we can change that soon then…” She trails off hoping for the girl to introduce herself, even though they both know that she knows who Ino is.

Ino gives her one last scrutinizing graze before taking the flower and tipping her chin, “Ino Yamanaka. Me and the girls were going to hang out at my house after school. You should come with. There’s lots I could teach you about flowers.”

And there’s her opportunity.

“Sakura Haruno. That sounds like fun,” she answers in kind, then hesitates for a moment before answering. “As long as your invite allows a plus one?” she says while taking a step back to align herself with Hinata.

She has no clue how Hinata will fit in with such a large group. She’s only just gotten used to Sakura.

Truth be told, Sakura can already foresee some of the other girls not taking a liking to her shy nature. Ino’s group – who previously looked giddy at the idea of Sakura hanging out with them - doesn’t seem too keen on the idea of having Hinata with them. However, she’s not just going to leave her behind just because she’s found a more popular crowd.

They will go together or not at all.

Hinata nervously darts her eyes between Sakura, Ino, and the group of girls, “T-That’s o-okay, I d-don’t have to-”

“Sure, why not?” Ino shrugs easily.

Sakura takes in the conflicted expression of the girls watching the exchange and Hinata, who looks on the verge of panic-mode, and internally sighs.

_Well, I’m sure this’ll turn out great..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the patience and all the lovely comments. 
> 
> Until next time, my beautiful readers~❤


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